Climategate: White House Involvement in Scandal Will Make It Harder for MSM to Ignore

NewsBusters ^ | November 26, 2009 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

Yesterday Brian Williams delivered an NBC Nightly News report about President Obama attending the Copenhagen global warming summit. Guess what hot topic was left untouched? If you had guessed Climategate you would have been correct. Not only Williams but also the other TV networks, with the exception of FOX News, have completely ignored what is considered to be the biggest scientific scandal in history. However, new Climategate revelations made by the Canada Free Press about a White House connection to the scandal will soon make it much more difficult (and ridiculous) for the networks to ignore.

Canada Free Press editor Judi McLeod and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball reveal the involvement of White House Science Czar John Holdren (photo) in the Climategate Scandal. The picture presented of Holdren is not a pretty one:

Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding as “Climategate”.

Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”.

[I got the rope]

I did a search of the email files and Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon are being trashed by these clowns.

Someone owes these two scientists an apology. Their like FReepers in the “climate science” world.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

I’ve posted this story on Digg.

http://digg.com/d31B8vb

Stop by and give it a digg!

[I got the rope]

Something big is about to happen over there. This has gone to the House of Lords.

[I got the rope]

Forgive my ignorance, but what does that mean? Digg?

[maica]

This is very poorly written...

It needs a flow chart to lead the reader from one reference to another reference. There are too many descending quotes, like a multigenerational genealogy chart, which make totally obscure the actual proofs of the accusation against Holdren.

PJ knew what he was trying to communicate, but it did not transfer to the article in an understandable fashion.

The link to the American Thinker article is valuable.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/crus_source_code_climategate_r.html

[Atlas Sneezed]

The NYT ignored the Swift Vets for about a month and then attacked them.

---

This time, they’ll ignore it for a month, and then dismiss it as “the same tired old accusations.”

[maica]

I just want to know how in the hell can Obama control so much media with such an explosive story?

#####

It is not a question of control. It is a situation of like minds agreeing on an ideological principle. No one is forcing ‘reporters’ to write certain things and ignore other things. They do the censoring by themselves.

[kickonly88]

Corruption has spread without end...

[I got the rope]

Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:46:23 -0400 To: "Nick Schulz" From: "John P. Holdren" Subject: RE: Harvard Crimson coverage of Soon / Baliunas controversy

Nick--

You ask good questions. I believe the thoughtfulness of your questions and the progress I believe we are making in this interchange contain the seeds of the answer to your final question, which, if I may paraphrase just a bit, is whether there's any hope of reaching reasonable public-policy decisions when the details of the science germane to those decisions are impenetrable to most citizens.

This is a hard problem. Certainly the difficulty is not restricted to climate science and policy, but applies also to nuclear-weapon science and policy, nuclear-energy science and policy, genetic science and policy, and much more. But I don't think the difficulties are insurmountable. That's why I'm in the business I'm in, which is teaching about and working on the intersection of science and technology with policy.

Most citizens cannot penetrate the details of what is known about the how the climate works (and, of course, what is known even by the most knowledgeable climate scientists about this is not everything one would like to know, and is subject to modification by new data, new insights, new forms of analysis). Neither would most citizens be able to understand how a hydrogen bomb works (even if the details were not secret), or what factors will determine the leak rates of radioactive nuclides from radioactive-waste repositories, or what stem-cell research does and promises to be able to do.

But, as Amory Lovins once said in addressing the question of whether the public deserved and could play a meaningful role in debates about nuclear-weapon policy, even though most citizens would never understand the details of how nuclear weapons work or are made, "You don't have to be a chicken to know what to do with an egg." In other words, for many (but not all) policy purposes, the details that are impenetrable do not matter.

There CAN be aspects of the details that do matter for public policy, of course. In those cases, it is the function and the responsibility of scientists who work across the science-and-policy boundary to communicate the policy implications of these details in ways that citizens and policy makers can understand. And I believe it is the function and responsibility of citizens and policy makers to develop, with the help of scientists and technologists, a sufficient appreciation of how to reach judgments about plausibility and credibility of communications about the science and technology relevant to policy choices so that the citizens and policy makers are NOT disenfranchised in policy decisions where science and technology are germane.

How this is best to be done is a more complicated subject than I am prepared to try to explicate fully here. (Alas, I have already spent more time on this interchange than I could really afford from other current commitments.) Suffice it to say, for now, that improving the situation involves increasing at least somewhat, over time, the scientific literacy of our citizens, including especially in relation to how science works, how to distinguish an extravagant from a reasonable claim, how to think about probabilities of who is wrong and who is right in a given scientific dispute (including the question of burden of proof as you and I have been discussing it here), how consulting and polling experts can illuminate issues even for those who don't understand everything that the experts say, and why bodies like the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change deserve more credibility on the question of where mainstream scientific opinion lies than the National Petroleum Council, the Sierra Club, or the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

Regarding extravagant claims, you continue to argue that Mann et al. have been guilty of this, but the formulation of theirs that you offer as evidence is not evidence of this at all. You quote them from the NYT in 1998, referring to a study Mann and co-authors published in that year, as saying "Our conclusion was that the warming of the past few decades appears to be closely tied to emission of greenhouse gases by humans and not any of the natural factors."

and you ask "Does that seem to be careful in the nature of a claim?" My answer is:

Yes, absolutely, their formulation is careful and appropriate. Please note that they did NOT say "Global warming is closely tied to emission of greenhouse gases by humans and not any of the natural factors." They said that THEIR CONCLUSION (from a particular, specified study, published in NATURE) was that the warming of THE PAST FEW DECADES (that is, a particular, specified part of the historical record) APPEARS (from the evidence adduced in the specified study) to be closely tied... This is a carefully specified, multiply bounded statement, which accurately reflects what they looked at and what they found. And it is appropriately contingent --"APPEARS to be closely tied" --

allowing for the possibility that further analysis or new data could later lead to a different perspective on what appears to be true.

With respect, it does not require a PhD in science to notice the appropriate boundedness and contingency in the Mann et al. formulation. It only requires an open mind, a careful reading, and a degree of understanding of the character of scientific claims and the wording appropriate to convey them that is accessible to any thoughtful citizen. That is why I'm an optimist.

You go on to quote the respected scientist "Tom Quigley" as holding a contrary view to that expressed by Mann. But please note that: (1) I don't know of any Tom Quigley working in this field, so I suspect you mean to refer to the prominent climatologist Tom Wigley; (2) the statements you attribute to "Quiqley" do not directly contradict the careful statement of Mann (that is, it is entirely consistent for Mann to say that his study found that recent warming appears to be tied to human emissions and for Wigley to say that that there are limits to how far one can go with this sort of analysis, without either one being wrong); and (3) Tom Wigley is one of the CO-AUTHORS of the resounding Mann et al. refutation of Soon and Baliunas (see attached PDF file).

I hope you have found my responses to be of some value. I now must get on with other things. Best,

John Holdren

JOHN P. HOLDREN

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy & Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- HARVARD UNIVERSITY ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- mail: BCSIA, JFK School, 79 JFK St, Cambridge, MA 02138 phone: 617 495-1464 / fax 617 495-8963 email: john_holdren@harvard.edu assistant: Patricia_McLaughlin@ksg.harvard.edu, 617 495-1498 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ JOHN P. HOLDREN ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy & Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- HARVARD UNIVERSITY ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- mail: BCSIA, JFK School, 79 JFK St, Cambridge, MA 02138 phone: 617 495-1464 / fax 617 495-8963 email: john_holdren@harvard.edu assistant: Patricia_McLaughlin@ksg.harvard.edu, 617 495-1498

[maica]

The switch in doctrine from the Earth going into terminal cooling to terminal warming happened as abruptly as the “hockey stick” designed by these so-called scientists.

[manc]

agreed.

The UK Govt is involved with all of this and so are the media and yet one would think that nothing has happened with our state run media.

You know just to vent my frustration.

I am so pissed off with this elitist media .
If they had done their job we would not have had this idiot in the white house, they still do not fact check him and his past.
It’s not like there are no questions about his past.
I mean off the top of me head there is.
Who paid for his Kenya /Odinga visit?
Why did he go there?
Has he been in touch this year?
Why was he so quick to seal his past records like even his school records?
Why does no one know him from Columbia and there are no .
pictures?
How much was he involved with Van Jones?
How much in the Navy seals charges ?
How about the Ft Hood shooting and what did he know?
How much involved is he about the terrorist coming to NY and IL?
Why did it take so long for a decision about a war he said it was vital to win?
Does he feel bad that he is always playing golf like Bush did while men and women die?
WHY CAN’T HE FIND A CHURCH?
Why was the MSM not invited to the second swearing in on Jan 20th?
Why has he not mentioned about this climate gate and how much does he know?
Why does he persist in pushing bills onto the public when the public doe snot want it and it is his job to represent the people?
Why did he not go to a war zone to see the troops for thanksgiving like others have in the past?
Who was on that fly over of NY city and why was the flight manifest not released still?
Why is he not getting rid of those radical in his admin and does he share those views, if not fire them?
What did he mean by the 57 states and the comment of typical white people and greedy white folk?
Why does he keep spending and the saying we have to get debt under control/
Why did he send out asking for donations against Sarah when he is president?
Why did he say that is doe not know about ACORN getting fed money when he worked for them?
Why is the SEIU always at the white house?
Why has his wife not took the first lady duties yet like Hillary for womens rights and Laura for reading and education?

This off the top of my head and there are much more the media could look into to.
It’s not like they have nothing to report on.

sorry for the rant and questions but this really pisses me off.
We have a man who came from no where.
We have only two books which he wrote with the help of a terrorist and the elitist media refuses to do any work on any of this

[XHogPilot]

Climate czar rejects doctored data claims (czar Carol Browner)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2394925/posts

[CriticalJ]

Where’s that NY Times special panel that is supposed to keep an eye on “right wing” blogs for info that they missed?

[I got the rope]

From: John P. Holdren [[2]mailto:john_holdren@harvard.edu]
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 11:06 AM
To: Nick Schulz

Subject: Harvard Crimson coverage of Soon / Baliunas controversy

Dear Nick Schultz —

I am sorry for the long delay in this response to your note of September 12. I have been swamped with other commitments. As you no doubt have anticipated, I do not put Mann et al. in the same category with Soon and Baliunas.

If you seriously want to know “Why not?”, here are three ways one might arrive at what I regard as the right conclusion:

(1) For those with the background and patience to penetrate the scientific arguments, the conclusion that Mann et al. are right and Soon and Baliunas are wrong follows from reading carefully the relevant Soon / Baliunas paper and the Mann et al. response to it:

W. Soon and S. Baliunas, “Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years”, Climate Research, vol. 23, pp 89ff, 2003.

M. Mann, C. Amman, R. Bradley, K. Briffa, P. Jones, T. Osborn, T. Crowley, M. Hughes, M. Oppenheimer, J. Overpeck, S. Rutherford, K. Trenberth, and T. Wigley, “On past
temperatures and anomalous late-20th century warmth”, EOS, vol 84, no. 27, pp 256ff, 8 July 2003.

This is the approach I took. Soon and Baliunas are demolished in this comparison.

(2) Those lacking the background and/or patience to penetrate the two papers, and seriously wanting to know who is more likely to be right, have the option of asking somebody who does possess these characteristics — preferably somebody outside the handful of ideologically committed and/or oil-industry-linked professional climate-change skeptics — to evaluate the controversy for them. Better yet, one could poll a number of such people. They can easily be found by checking the web pages of earth sciences, atmospheric sciences, and environmental sciences departments at any number of major universities.

(3)The least satisfactory approach, for those not qualified for (1) and lacking the time or initiative for (2), would be to learn what one can about the qualifications(including publications records) and reputations, in the field in question, of the authors on the two sides. Doing this would reveal that Soon and Baliunas are, essentially, amateurs in the interpretation of historical and paleoclimatological
records of climate change, while the Mann et al. authors include several of the most published and most distinguished people in the world in this field.

Such an investigation would also reveal that Dr. Baliunas’ reputation in this field suffered considerable damage a few years back, when she put her name on an incompetent critique
of mainstream climate science that was never published anywhere respectable but was circulated by the tens of thousands, in a format mimicking that of a reprint from the

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in pursuit of signatures on a petition claiming that the mainstream findings were wrong.

Of course, the third approach is the least satisfactory because it can be dangerous to assume that the more distinguished people are always right. Occasionally, it turns out that the opposite is true. That is one of several good reasons that it pays to try to penetrate the arguments, if one can, or to poll others who have tried to do so.

But in cases where one is not able or willing to do either of these things — and where one is able to discover that the imbalance of experience and reputation on the two sides of the issue is as lopsided as here — one ought at least to recognize that the odds strongly favor the proposition that the more experienced and reputable people are right. If one were a policy maker, to bet the public welfare on the long odds of the opposite being true would be foolhardy.

Sincerely,

John Holdren

PS: I have provided this response to your query as a personal communication, not as fodder for selective excerpting on your web site or elsewhere. If you do decide that you would like to propagate my views on this matter more widely, I ask that you convey my response in its entirety.

[I got the rope]

Screw you Holdren. You’re done you arrogant assh_ole!

[Forgiven_Sinner]

“Forgive my ignorance, but what does that mean? Digg?”

No problem; Digg is a social networking site where people vote on various news articles. Typically, the liberal perspective dominates, yet a vociferous group of conservatives prevails there. If I could activate the thousands of Freepers into digging conservative stories, the conservative news will become more available.

Call me Don Quixote.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Good summaries, here and above with respect to Holdren’s attacks on earlier researchers.

Thank you.

[grey_whiskers]

The last couple of days, I've kept confusing Hol-DREN and Hol-DER.

It's made for some wonderfully psychedelic cognitive dissonance, you can well believe :-)

Cheers!

[driftless2]

The AGW scam is something Big Lib Media has invested billions of dollars into promoting. They’re not going to ditch it just because a few of the fraudsters got caught with their hands in the cookie er climate jar so to speak. They’ll stonewall this as best they can and hope they can suppress it like they’ve suppressed the role of the FM’s in the housing market caused financial disaster.

[seton89]

John Holdren wrote-

“U.S. polls indicate that most of the amateur skeptics are Republicans. These Republican skeptics should wonder how the presidential candidate John McCain could have been taken in. He has castigated the Bush administration for wasting eight years in inaction on climate change, and the policies he says he would implement as president include early and deep cuts in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. (Barack Obama’s position is similar.)”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/opinion/04iht-edholdren.1.14991915.html?_r=1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The real Republican Party is again saving the Union.